


Constellations I: The Sun

by thehousewedestroyed



Series: The Real Relationship Was The House We Destroyed Along The Way [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Extended Metaphors, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-19
Updated: 2018-01-19
Packaged: 2019-03-06 16:10:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13414866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thehousewedestroyed/pseuds/thehousewedestroyed
Summary: How Remus thought he lost Sirius the first time.





	Constellations I: The Sun

**Author's Note:**

> One of three small stories about a Lupin, a Black, and a Potter. Filling the spaces around Remus in the House We Destroyed timeline. Underage only loosely described, character deaths are canonical.

The thing about constellations is, they’re not _real_.

Remus knew this. The lines between stars, billions of miles apart, are imaginary. Imagined by people, who looked into nothingness dotted with random, meaningless, arbitrary stars, and they saw lines. Lines made shapes, and shapes made stories. And once you saw the connections, you couldn’t _unsee_ them, looking at the sky. They were pulled together with a force stronger than gravity: stories, or destiny, or whatever it was. That, he supposed, was what divination was meant to be.

He thought he had no Eye for it. But it always seemed clear to him, how these threads, these lines between people, could tie and could tether. He’d grown up believing himself destined to be alone, but, no matter how unlikely, how arbitrary it was, he was strung to two other souls. To Sirius, and to James, who reeled him into their gang and loved him silly. He loved them back, and they wove one another together.

Remus loved Sirius and Sirius loved James. This strange orbit seemed doomed to collide, but still they spun. They were drunk on youth, reckless with potential. They ran under the stars, and they kissed, and they fought and fucked and fumbled. Remus did not regret a moment of it.

The strings grew so taut that they could be plucked, ringing with a different note depending on how the three of them were orbiting one another at any moment. Sometimes a melody, how the three adored one another, in and out of each other’s arms and beds and hearts. Sometimes discord, when Sirius was too fierce, James too proud, Remus too distant. Tension and release, ebb and flow, waxing and waning. Never tight enough to snap, never loose enough to drift.

They were only boys. As they grew up—too fast, that was war for you—they learned to unspool. Until James and Sirius stopped crashing together like a supernova. Until Sirius and Remus could braid something of their own. Until Remus and James no longer tugged so sharply between one another.

They finished school. James and Sirius moved in together. Then Sirius with Remus, James with Lily. Lily and James married. They had a baby. And then—and then.

Some lines hurt. They pulled and twisted and tangled, so tightly that the only thing to do was to cut the knotted parts away. Remus had done that, when he’d had to. When a sun collapsed, a world going dark—Lily and James, gone. When the thread worn thin between himself and Sirius finally snapped, or was cut, Remus couldn’t tell. He could only tell the gaping, abyssal pain of suddenly being untethered.

He imagined it afterward like two constellations with overlapping stars. One said this star was a heart; one said it was a sword. Two stories, and one was true, then the other was true. Sirius was a Black. He was a pureblood. Those bonds were tight too. He’d lost his brother, his family. Remus knew how fragile their old balance had been. How deeply resentment could fester in Sirius. To loosen his grip on James but never truly lose him, how that must have hurt. How Remus was away more and more, insinuating himself into a wolf pack. A new constellation. No longer an adequate counterweight for Sirius and James.

Blood ties. Those were the strongest, according to the lore. So a heart could become a sword, and Sirius cut them all to pieces.


End file.
